How corporate America built a better Roach Motel: Today’s economy is founded on the belief that monopolies are efficient. If monopolies failed to make their customers happy, competitors would come along to dethrone the monopoloy. But that’s not how it works in the real world...

Teddy (T.M.) Brown “Sometimes, I think we as writers overestimate how much people care about the quality of writing outside of specific venues like fiction, criticism, and narrative journalism. But the balance of written words produced in the world are not valued for their q...

I find quitting Facebook to be worse than quitting cigarettes — because I did quit cigarettes. A friend had his account canceled and I envy him. Sometimes I think well maybe I should lie and tell people my account was canceled? When was kvetching to a friend — another friend...

In the latest advance in brain-computer interfaces, a company said its wireless device enabled speech even when a patient just imagined saying words.

I’m fascinated by brain-computer interfaces, not just for disabled people, but for everyone. However, the trust issue seems as difficult to overcome as technical hurdles — can you imagine giving Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk access to your one and only brain? And it’s not just Zuck and Mecha-Hitler — I can’t imagine giving any company that kind of access.

www.nytimes.com/2026/09/1…

An interview with Nathan Fillion about Lanterns, Guy Gardner, Supergirl and the DCU. variety.com/2026/tv/n…

Happy 21st of September to all who celebrate! youtu.be/Gs069dndI…

Anders: “‘Monoculture’ is what it sounds like: the notion of a culture where everyone is obsessing about the same pieces of culture. In my piece about the mistakes people made when they tried to copy Game of Thrones, I mentioned the notion that Thrones was the last TV show that absolutely everyone watched and talked about. Pundits and culture writers have written endlessly about how tragic it is that monoculture no longer exists, meaning that everyone likes different stuff.”

She makes four points:

“1. We still kind of have a monoculture.

“2. We never really did have a monoculture in the way that some people seem to think we did.

“3. The notion of a monoculture feels oppressive and shitty

“4. You can’t separate this notion from questions around representation and assimilation.”

Journalist Jeremy Stern profiles Zuckerberg in depth.
colossus.com/article/m…

The Roman Emperor Augustus is a hero to Zuckerberg, who says Augustus ushered in two centuries of peace.

Many American men are fascinated by the Roman Empire; Zuckerberg may be the only one with the power to do something with that fascination.

I spent $4,000 on a robot dog from China. Unitree might be the world’s most important robotics company.

Unvaccinated Pennsylvania woman died of measles complications, coroner says

‘Billionaires shouldn’t exist.’ Why California unions are fighting for a wealth tax

The miraculous Shit-Raining Machine, from which there will be NO HOPE OF RELIEF, promises to unlock PREVIOUSLY UNIMAGINABLE AND CURRENTLY VAGUE BENEFITS FOR HUMANKIND, such as:

Business things Other stuff WE MUST CREATE IT

Could the Shit Machine END WORLD HUNGER? It’s NOT IMPOSSIBLE in the most LITERAL SENSE, which is all the justification we need to invest an AMOUNT OF MONEY that would OTHERWISE BY ITSELF END ACTUAL WORLD HUNGER.

— Pete Reynolds www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/…

Security cameras captured a man breaking in to a San Diego home, where he took off his shirt and fixed himself a snack. Nash, the family golden retriever, sprang into action, bringing the intruder a toy to try to induce the man to play. www.nbcsandiego.com/video/vid…

When police arrived on the scene, guns drawn, Nash brought them a toy too.

Later, Nash demanded bellyrubs from a TV news reporter.

Nash is the best.

I’m on my way home from my latest business trip. The pilot just got on the loudspeaker to say we’re 40 minutes to touchdown.

I don’t think they should be playing Madden up there. They should be concentrating on flying the plane.

After more than two years at Fierce Network, my email address has finally gotten out to the directories that PR agencies buy, and I’m now getting literally dozens of pitches a day. Many of them are outrageously offtarget – I seem to have gotten on lists for healthcare, for j...

AI agent governance is having its OpenStack moment. Everyone agrees AI agents need guardrails. No one agrees whose. Apelogic’s Boris Renski sees cloud history repeating itself. My latest on Fierce Network.

A coffeeshop owner used AI to make posters and started getting angry DMs and threats. “There is a real person behind this small business. I am doing my best to run a local coffee shop, support my team, serve our community, and navigate being a new mom at the same time.”

A new book argues that modern schooling is the cause of the increase in teen depression and suicides, and blaming phones and social media is junk science. www.theverge.com/policy/99… Kids are depressed because they aren’t allowed to play independently and because of rigid sc...

Dolly Parton, by Irving Penn (1977) reddit.com/r/OldScho…_parton_by_irving_penn_1977/ Gene Hackman and his three children (Christopher, Elizabeth, and Leslie) enjoying the snow in Sun Valley, Idaho, 1974 reddit.com/r/OldScho…_hackman_and_his_three_children_christopher/

Day 3 of business travel. The waffles stuck to the top of the waffle machine at the breakfast buffet. Is this how the rest of my day will go?

Ericsson CTO: The road to 6G success runs through AI on 5G. At the Ericsson Industry Analyst Event in Boston, CTO Erik Ekudden laid out a road map for operators to build AI businesses on 5G before 6G arrives. My latest on Fierce Network.

Hamilton Nolan: “Trans people are a tiny minority, trans people can easily be demonized, and so the Republican Party has made the decision to spend hundreds of millions of dollars raising the salience of ‘trans issues’ in political campaigns, because they wager that it is go...

Sovereignty drives Orange Business to open-weight AI. Orange Business is moving its most sensitive AI workloads onto open-weight models running on infrastructure it controls, driven primarily by sovereignty concerns. I talked with Miguel Alvarez Bernardo, Orange chief data and AI officer, about how the company is adapting to the changing AI landscape. “On AI, if your expectations are not being reset at least twice a month, you are maybe not paying attention to everything that’s going on,” he said. My latest on Fierce Network.

Turtles when a job requires exactly 0 turtles lol by u/ImmaFuckboi in MadeMeSmile

Titan, by John Varley. Cover artist: Ron Walotsky reddit.com/r/CoolSci… Aguascalientes, Mexico. reddit.com/r/UrbanHe…